Asgar and Gabriel deliver sharp social satire in paintings portraying the culture of contemporary youth. Asgar & Gabriel’s pictorial representations make use of photorealism, graffiti and neon colours to paraphrase apocalyptic scenes of human souls heading for the abyss. The artistic duo finds inspiration for their often meter-long canvases in the history of art. In the painting “in den hohen Wellen unserer Abenteuer, 2010, we see a group of women who, despite the fact that the boat is slowly being filled with water, behave like carefree tourists on their way to Bountyland. A monstrously huge octopus is surrounding the boat and transforms the scene into that of a group of boat refugees on their way to Lampedusa, but forced back by the harbour police. In this way paradise and social criticism go into creating this meta-reality, establishing a dialectic between Utopia and real life.

The title of the exhibition, Under the Paving Stones, the Beach, is a slogan used by Parisian students during the 1968 revolt, and before that by the Situationist International movement, co-founded by the painter Asger Jorn. When all of the city’s cobble stones had been thrown at the authorities, only the sand would remain—the ideal existence. Elisabeth Gabriel and Daryoush Asgar have collaborated on their gigantic, joint paintings since 2005. Elisabeth Gabriel was born in Vienna in 1974 and Daryoush Asgar in Teheran in 1975. Today, both live and work in Vienna. The exhibition at Kunsthallen Brandts presents works dating from the past three years along with two recent, seven-meter-wide canvases.

OpeningUnder the Paving Stones, the Beach opens on 8 September at 5 p.m. The opening speech will be given by the visual artist and Ph.D. Dorthe Jelstrup. The exhibiting artists themselves will be present.

Catalogue
An exhibition catalogue, published by Kunsthallen Brandts and featuring articles by curator Synne Genzmer, Wien art critic Michael Jeppesen and curator Margit Zuckriegl, Salzburg will be available at Brandts Shop from 26 September.

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